Madame

by Antoni Libera

  ‘That remains to be established.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  ‘You expect my ID to tell you?’

  ‘You won’t talk your way out of it, citizen. Do you intend to produce your documents or not?’

  ‘I’m telling you, I haven’t got them!’

  ‘You want me to call the police car?’

  ‘Jesus, what do you want from me?! You want my name? My address?’ I reached into my pocket and took out my monthly bus pass. Salvation. ‘Here you are: first name, surname, address and photo with the stamp of the Urban Transport Authority, so that you don’t have the slightest doubt that I really am who I claim to be.’

  He took the pass and gazed at it with absorption, turning it this way and that, as if he had found something suspicious.

  ‘It’s valid, I assure you,’ I broke in, unable to bear the suspense. ‘The stamp is glued on, and it has the number written on it.’

  ‘I’m not a ticket inspector,’ he reminded me curtly. ‘For me this does not constitute a proper document.’ Switching suddenly to an official and businesslike tone, he asked, ‘What was the purpose of your presence within these grounds?’

  So that’s what he’s after! I was disconcerted. How on earth could I explain? I tried the naïve approach: ‘Is entry forbidden?’

  ‘Did I say entry was forbidden? I asked about the purpose of your visit. There’s no consulate here.’

  ‘So what if there’s no consulate?’

  ‘It means you didn’t come here for a visa. What did you come for, then?’

  ‘Am I required to explain?’

  ‘Since I’m asking you . . .’

  It was clear that further discussion boded ill. If I wanted to come out of it intact, I’d have to offer him some sort of quid pro quo: get him to agree to an ‘exchange’, at least.

  ‘It’s to do with a chess match between Poland and France,’ I said, deadpan. ‘We’re working out the final dates and things. And just so you don’t think I’m making it up,’ I continued, reaching into my inside jacket pocket and taking out my club card, ‘here’s the proof. Go ahead. Take a look.’

  He took the pass and began to inspect it. I went on, getting into the flow: ‘If I’m not mistaken, you read Sports Weekly. You might have seen me mentioned there: junior vice-champion, Marymont Workers’ Club.’

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘You’re free,’ he growled finally, handing me back the bus pass and the club card.

  ‘I certainly am . . .’ I muttered ambiguously.

  He saluted and turned back to his booth.

  As I was putting away my credentials I happened to glance at the façade of the embassy. In a ground-floor window I clearly glimpsed the face of the receptionist.

  I raised my head and gazed upwards with the concentrated air of one who has just had a brilliant idea, or perhaps is looking to heaven for inspiration.

  Above him, on its tall white mast, the flag of the French Republic fluttered proudly in the wind. Victory! he thought, with renewed hope.

  Onward! Westward Ho!

  A victory, yes, but a Pyrrhic one. Not because of the price I had paid for this ‘voyage across the seas’ (the row with the ticket inspectors, Lord Jim’s jump overboard, the damage to my clothes, the run-in with the policeman), but because of its psychological effects.

  These could be summed up very simply. On the one hand, I had gained the longed-for opportunity to shift the game beyond the wasteland of school. On the other hand, upon discovering Madame’s strategy, and especially her true motives and aims, I had once again, this time perhaps definitively, lost faith in my ‘wooing’ and, consequently, my desire to continue it.

  What could I hope for, knowing what I knew? That I might succeed in striking up a conversation with her at the Zacheta Gallery or in the theatre, and that things would be different there? That she would be different – towards me? That she would talk to me freely, playfully, informally – like the silver-haired Marianne or at least the Green-Eyed One?

  No. Not really. Not any more. At least, I couldn’t imagine it.

  How was this conversation supposed to happen in the first place? And more to the point, why should it be any different? What did ‘there’ have that would make the ice melt and break – what actions, what words unavailable elsewhere?

  Of course, I had one move open to me: pretended blackmail. I could exploit my knowledge about her, notably about her plans, make it clear to her that I knew where my notebook was, and why . . .

  ‘A propos, you’ve only been teaching me three, three and a half months, not a year and a half. Your modesty is excessive. You shouldn’t disparage your astonishing results in this way. But then, a year and a half is good time, too. As long as no one finds out . . . you’re leaving in the summer, is that right?’

  She didn’t know much about me: what kind of people I knew, what ‘contacts’ I might have – ‘who I was,’ in short, or ‘where I came from’. So a sudden attack of this kind might frighten her into a response. After all, maybe I knew someone from the Service Culturel? Since I seemed to be able to get into the exclusive events it organised and knew French so well? Or maybe I had contacts in the secret police? Since I went about so confident and self-assured, as if I could do whatever I felt like? And even if I didn’t and wasn’t up to anything, how could she trust me to hold my tongue, a young fool in love like me? I might blab, my sort were unpredictable, no telling what I might do. It would be better to tame me, defang me by granting me favours.

  With all her suspicions (for which she had grounds) and the wariness that Constant had mentioned, she might well reason this way.

  But was that what I wanted? Would the longed-for response have any value for me if that was how it was obtained? No – none whatsoever. The very thought revolted me. To achieve my aim this way would be pathetic – and loathsome. I’d feel degraded. It would be a defeat, not a victory.

  I recalled Freddy’s story about Dr Dolowy – the smuggled caviar and the ballpoints, how Freddy had discovered these lucrative little deals, and how it had then occurred to him that he could exploit his knowledge. ‘Revolting, wasn’t it?’ I could hear his voice, and the bitterness in it. He’d added: ‘When everything around you is despicable and corrupt, you, too, become despicable and corrupt. Remember that!’

  The memory was a warning signal. This is it, I thought, the fun and games are over. The air is stifling, and the ground below my feet more and more slippery. One false step and I’ll be in the bog up to my neck – and then I could get sucked under. Perhaps I should turn around? There’s still time.

  Turn around? Retreat? said another voice in my head. Now that you’ve come so far? No, unthinkable! You must go on – you must! You can’t give up! You must follow the current: drift, like Heyst. Remember, reflection and excessive caution are not the best counsels. Blessed fog: that’s what you should put your trust in if you want to get anywhere. You’ll get nothing without risk; there’s no life without sin. Besides, where’s the sin? Where’s the risk? That you’ll succumb to the temptation to play dirty or do something foolish? That’s always a risk, even if you don’t go on. But what did God give you a mind for, if not to control yourself? This is no time to hesitate. Be resolute! Onwards!

  ‘Onwards’ meant attending the opening of the Picasso exhibition, and perhaps seeing her there. But there was still a week to go until then – and in that week I had three French classes to get through.

  At these I abandoned my recent behaviour. I stopped my ostentatious pretence of reading and annotating Conrad’s Victory and Joanna Schopenhauer’s memoirs and emerged from my provocative passivity. No longer sullen and moody, I became industrious, eager and attentive – a model pupil. The aim of this strategy was to lull her vigilance, and the message I wanted to get across went something like this:

  ‘I was angry at you, it’s true – I don’t deny it. I was angry because you didn’t answer
my serenade, and because of your cruel and incomprehensible treatment of me, as if you were punishing me for something . . . in short, for your unfairness, your harshness, your insensitivity. But that’s all over and done with. Love forgives all. I’m back to my old self, as you see – more submissive than ever, in fact.’

  Strangely enough, she accepted this quite readily, even, it seemed, with a kind of relief. When I made my first conciliatory gesture (answering a question about the pluperfect tense that no one else seemed eager to attempt), she didn’t respond with ostentatious distaste – a possibility I had envisaged and even expected – but heard me out with well-inclined attention, as if there had been no Cold War, no tension, no sulking, as if I were the ever-polite, ever-submissive Agnes Wanko. And after that she was neutral: not hostile but not visibly well disposed, either. Although, on the other hand . . .

  In the third class something unusual happened – something quite astonishing, in fact. We were learning about the sequence of tenses in sentences with subordinate clauses. She dictated an exercise for us to work out on paper and then strolled slowly among the rows of desks, surveying our work. When she came to mine she halted, paused for a moment, and then, in an undertone, so as not to disturb the others in their work, said to me, in Polish (which she almost never used in class), ‘Go and bring me the exercise book with the concordance des temps. It’s on my desk. In the middle.’

  Stupefied, astounded, unable to believe my ears, I rose and without a word began to make for the door.

  ‘La clé,’ her voice recalled me. I turned.

  Her right arm was stretched towards me. Between two fingers of her hand she held out a round tin tag from which dangled the key to her office.

  As I took it, my glance went involuntarily to her face and met her eyes. They seemed to have been waiting for it. She was studying me carefully, and with something like inquiry; her pupils held an obscure question. I gave the slightest of nods, as if in confirmation or apology, and quickly left the classroom.

  What is this? I thought excitedly as I hurried along the silent corridors and ran down the stairs, what is it supposed to mean? Does it mean anything at all? Is it just an ordinary, insignificant errand? Or is it something more? Is this her first move in a new game? A response to my show of reconciliation? Before I could begin to unravel my tangled thoughts I was in front of her office door.

  I wasn’t entering this room for the first time, but the last occasion had been a very long time ago – something like two years, at any rate long before Madame came on the scene. I had a vague memory of dark, highly polished glass-fronted bookcases holding mostly crystal vases, sports cups and an elaborate tea service. I also remembered an enormous desk with two telephones and a flexilamp, and a huge palm in a wooden tub like a bucket.

  The sight that met my eyes this time when I opened the door was radically different in both style and content. The palm, the crystal and the high polish had gone, replaced by an elegant simplicity: plain ‘rustic-style’ chairs of natural, light, gold-coloured wood, a trestle table for a desk, a graceful standing lamp with a straw shade. There was a dark-green carpet on the floor, and dark-green curtains at the window. Ordinary bookshelves held books. Against one wall stood a sort of couch or upholstered bench that could seat about three people, and in front of it a low coffee-table covered with an embroidered linen cloth. There were also two small armchairs with low backs and wooden arms.

  I looked at the bookshelves. The overwhelming majority of the books were French. On the lower shelves stood dictionaries and reference books, anthologies, dozens of textbooks and the Grand Larousse; above them was a literary medley, with a good number of paperbacks. A small bookcase next to the couch held albums and illustrated magazines; on top of it, between two decorative wooden bookends, gleamed a row of gold-embossed Pléiade editions: Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Corneille, Molière, Racine – almost all the classics, arranged in alphabetical order.

  Where did she get all this, I wondered, amazed. Does she buy it? Import it from France? Through the Service Culturel? And why does she keep it here? What does she need it for? Not for lessons. For show, then? But for whose benefit? For the legendary commission on its visits of inspection?

  Tearing my gaze away from the books, I approached the table to look for the exercise book she had asked for. And that was when I saw something that took my breath away.

  A handbag. Her handbag. Hanging from the chair behind the table. Not closed, open. Gaping open, in fact.

  My immediate impulse was to look inside.

  Her ID! Her photo! I thought excitedly. Her marital status! Will it be single or something different? Her description, her distinguishing marks – did she have any? . . . What were they? . . . And her place of birth! What would that say? France? Where exactly? . . . There might be photos: of her parents? Of a man, perhaps! . . . And all her other documents – her Party membership card! And all the rest. All of it, everything!

  I flung myself at the door and turned the key in the lock. But when I had run back to the table, my hand already stretched out for the treasure chest that dangled in front of me on the back of the chair, I froze. I saw that inquiring look she’d given me when she had held out the key, and then I saw the scene in the hotel room that Freddy had described, when he had rifled through Dr Dolowy’s luggage.

  I almost did it, I thought, I almost succumbed. That’s how the Tempter works – you don’t even notice when you fall into his clutches.

  I grabbed the exercise book and ran from the office as if I were fleeing demons.

  It’s obvious, I thought, pounding up the stairs several steps at a time: it was a test – of my honesty. She wanted to see if I could be trusted. She probably had everything meticulously arranged in that bag so that she could see at a glance if anything had been shifted even the slightest bit. Thank God I didn’t touch it, thank God something stopped me at the last minute! Something . . . Freddy’s story, or that inquiring look when she handed me the key? Which?

  Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I slipped into the classroom as calmly and quietly as I could.

  She was standing between the rows of desks, her back to me, bent over a book she was holding in her hands. I went up to her and in silence handed her the exercise book.

  ‘Ah, yes, thank you,’ she muttered mechanically, and took it without interrupting her reading.

  I waited a second, possibly longer. Then I held out my right hand, on the open palm of which the key reposed as if on a salver, and said in an undertone, ‘Et voilà la clé.’ And locked my gaze at the level of her eyes, so that when she turned around she would have to encounter it.

  Which is indeed what happened.

  ‘Ah, oui,’ she muttered again, but this time she seemed disconcerted, almost flustered. One possible sign of this was that as she took the key she accidentally, lightly brushed against my hand.

  FIVE

  Here is My Space!

  The opening of the exhibition at the Zacheta Gallery was on Sunday at noon. I got there at least twenty minutes early, but even so there was already a crush, at the entrance as well as in the vestibule, and much loud and animated chatter. French seemed to predominate – at least it stood out, perhaps because of its melodiousness and distinctive coloratura – but several other languages could be distinguished in the hubbub: Italian, Spanish, English and occasionally, rarest and faintest of all, the familiar sounds of Polish.

  On a wide landing at the top of the first staircase two microphones had been placed in front of an enormous photograph of Picasso, with his hugely magnified signature scrawled across it. Below this, on a small plinth, stood a sapphire-blue vase with several dozen red and white carnations, and slightly above, on either side of the sweep of marble banisters leading to the first floor, bristled an array of cameras and lights on tripods.

  The cloakroom was manned by a uniformed porter and a tall, French-speaking woman with a badge that said ‘Service – CBAE’ pinned to the lapel of her suit. (This, for those
who may have forgotten, stood for ‘Central Bureau of Artists’ Exhibitions’.) As each guest’s outer garment was entrusted into their care, one or other of them would politely ask to see the owner’s invitation, then acknowledge it with an obsequious ‘thank you’ or ‘merci beaucoup’.

  As I waited my turn I felt a stirring of anxiety. How would they react to my carte d’entrée? Would they give it the same ‘thank you’ everyone else got, or would they be surprised, perhaps even express reservations? It bore the stamp of the embassy and, above it, the sprawling signature of the director of the Service, but there was no name on it. What would I do if they asked me who I was and how I had come by it? Should I tell the truth or try to pass for someone else? But who? A Frenchman? Too risky. Someone connected with the diplomatic corps? I couldn’t make up my mind.

  Finally I had an idea. My invaluable safety-pins were in their usual place in my wallet. I extracted one, stuck it through the card, and pinned the latter in a prominent position on my chest. Thus embellished I inched forward with the rest of the queue. Once I had reached the front, and heard the porter’s respectful ‘Your invitation, please,’ addressed to me, I assumed the distracted air of one who is in a great hurry and, affecting bafflement, as if I didn’t quite understand what he wanted, I pointed discreetly at my chest.

  ‘Oh, excusez-moi!’ intervened the woman from the CBAE, chagrined, and, as if to compensate, handed me the catalogue.

  ‘Merci, merci, Madame,’ I said with the best accent and rolling French r I could manage, and, smiling inwardly, handed over my coat.

  This trial behind me, I proceeded at once to a methodical inspection of the assembled guests, trying to spot Madame among them. Not seeing her, I looked about for a strategic position, found it (on the steps to the right of the door, behind an easel bearing a board with the exhibition poster), stationed myself at it, and from this excellent vantage-point, hidden from view, observed the crowds streaming through the entrance.